The Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) is delighted to announce an artist talk by OCA ISP residents Rometti Costales taking place at the Nordland kunst- og filmfagskole in the Lofoten archipelago, on Tuesday 31 May 2016 .

Rometti Costales’s artists-in-residency is the first residential programme forming part of the OCA project ‘Thinking at the Edge of the World. Perspectives from the North’ and it has been structured together with the artists as a light and a dark period of visitation and research. The light period residency will take place in May and June 2016 in Nordland and the Svalbard archipelago and it is made possible through the kind support and collaboration of Nordland County Council, Bodø; The Hamsun Centre, Hamarøy; Árran Lule Sámi Center, Tysfjord; and The North Norwegian Art Center, Vågan. The dark period residency will take place in February 2017 and it is made possible through the kind collaboration and support of Pikene på Broen, Kirkenes.

Also upcoming in ‘Thinking at the Edge of the World. Perspectives from the North’ is a conference in the Svalbard archipelago to be held from 12-13 June 2016 initiated and developed by Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) and the Northern Norway Art Museum (NNKM). For more information about the Svalbard programme please click here.

Rometti Costales’s talk is open to everyone. If you have questions regarding attendance please send an e-mail to the programme coordinator Kjetil Moelv. For more information about this announcement, please contact OCA’s Communication Manager Tara Hassel.

About the artists
Rometti Costales have been working together since 2007. The duo consists of Julia Rometti, born in Nice in 1975, and Victor Costales, of Ecuadorian and Belarusian extraction, born in Minsk in 1974. They currently live and work in Mexico City. Their work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions including: Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland; La Casa del Lago in Mexico City, Mexico (2014); L’Appartement 22 in Rabat, Morocco; La Central in Bogota, Colombia; Jousse Entreprise gallery in Paris; Midway Contemporary Art in MN, USA (2013); and Project Room Arte Actual in Quito, Ecuador (2011). They have also presented their work at Proyecto Siqueiros - La Tallera, Cuernavaca, Mexico (2015); in the context of the Cuenca Biennial in Ecuador (2014); at the Frac Nord Pas-de-Calais, at Pilar Corrias Gallery in London, at the SALTS art centre in Basel, at the CRAC Alsace in Altkirch, at Fondation Gulbenkian in Paris (2013), at the Kunsthalle Zürich, at the Qalandiya International Biennial, Jerusalem and Ramallah (2012), at the David Roberts Art Foundation in London, at the Royal Institute of Art in Stockholm (2011); at the 29th Sao Paulo Biennial and at CAPACETE (2010). They are currently preparing a public commission for the Bordeaux Urban Community at the invitation of Centre Pompidou's Deputy Director Catherine David. Their work will be presented soon at Tenderpixel in London, and at the 12th Bienal Monterrey FEMSA in Mexico.

OCA ISP – International Studio Programme
International residents (artists, curators and critics) are invited to OCA’s International Studio Programme (ISP) for a period of up to three months. The length of the stay depends on the respective resident’s schedule needs. The resident is provided with a professional studio, an apartment at Ekely (an artists's colony where Edvard Munch built his studio where he lived and worked until his death in 1944) for their stay in Oslo, and additional research possibilities during his or her stay. The residency can be used for independent research, work on a project taking place in Norway, teaching purposes or for other activities in relation to Norwegian contemporary culture. OCA’s ISP programme guests are also invited to extend their residency participation into networked activities in the form of public talks, seminars and presentations organised by OCA and/or at the invitation of other institutions throughout Norway.

In 2016 OCA, under the umbrella of the project 'Thinking at the Edge of the World. Perspectives from the North’ has initiated a number of residencies and programmes of readings, performances, lectures and upcoming exhibitions for visiting artists, curators and critics in Northern Norway with the cooperation and support of local institutions.

About the Nordland kunst- og filmfagskole
Nordland kunst- og filmfagskole offers specialised studies for students wanting to work with moving images and with the ambition of becoming an artist and a filmmaker. The school’s aim is to inspire the student’s individual voice, and to provide students with a greater understanding and knowledge of the complexity and the importance that moving images play in our society today. For more information about the school please visit www.kunstfilm.no.

ABOUT OCA'S NOTATIONS
Costales Rometti artist talk is part of OCA’s continuous programming Notations. OCA's 'Notations' unfold as a series of programmatic activities – performing, writing, thinking, fragmenting, exhibiting, moving, eating and socialising – that explore the desire for the institution to reflect upon the potential for artistic practice as an alchemical sphere of public action.

'Thinking at the Edge of the World’ is a cross-disciplinary international conference initiated and developed by Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) and the Northern Norway Art Museum (NNKM). Held on Svalbard from 12-13 June 2016, it brings together figures from the fields of art, architecture, psychology, philosophy, history and science, who are invited to visit and think about the region, considering it as a unique vantage point from which to reﬂect upon the environmental, aesthetic, architectural, economic, political and scientiﬁc forces that are shaping the North of Norway and its relationship to the world.

How are frontiers questioned from an Arctic vantage point, and how might this questioning catalyse new thinking regarding territory, power and resource exploitation? Could concepts of society, aesthetics and community explored during the nineteenth and twentieth century – often led by artists and intellectuals from Norway and its indigenous communities – be sought again to enlighten this debate?

The conference coincides with the opening of a solo exhibition by the Norwegian contemporary artist Olav Christopher Jenssen at Northern Norway Art Museum’s Kunsthall Svalbard in Longyearbyen. The exhibition features new work inspired by Jenssen’s recent residency project with Kunsthall Svalbard.

Confirmed highlights include a conversation between Candice Hopkins, Chief Curator at The IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, and legendary journalist and Sami political rights activist Niillas Somby, as well as Lisa Philips, Director of New Museum in New York; Robert Templer, Director of The Center for Conflict, Negotiation and Recovery, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary; Elena Isayev, Professor of Ancient History at the University of Exeter, UK; Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director of NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore; Luba Kuzovnikova, Director of Pikene på Broen, Kirkenes; Julie Decker, CEO and Director of Anchorage Museum, AK, USA; Sami poet and visual artist Synnøve Persen; and AK Dolven, one of Norway’s foremost visual artists. A panel discussion on the future of the oceans is complemented by a special screening of Leviathan, an experimental work about the North American fishing industry by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Véréna Paravel, and Kim Holmén, International Director of the Norwegian Polar Institute, will lead a boat trip to the glacier front.

Other elements of the diverse programme include a 24-hour sensory intervention and scent workshop devised by design historian, writer and curator Emily King with leading perfumer Nadjib Achaibou.

Katya García-Antón, Director of OCA, comments: 'The Arctic region, in particular that of Norway, sits at the heart of heated as well as inspiring discussions of scenarios for possible futures. Svalbard is home to researchers from around the globe studying the oceans, the ice edge, marine mammals, arctic botany, polar micro-organisms, extreme environment technology, maritime trade-routes, the psychology of extended light duration, or the notion of sensory tourism, amongst so many questions. An arena for kaleidoscopic global thought, Svalbard brings forth histories of survival, territorial delimitation, and continuous re-invention as much as it paves the way for the considerations that will formulate the new societies of the future. We feel there could be no better place from which to launch the Svalbard Conference 'Thinking at the Edge of the World', as part of OCA’s long-term research, lectures, and exhibition programmes in the North as a commitment that we hope will draw significant international attention to the region.'

Jérémie Michael McGowan, Director of Northern Norway Art Museum, comments: 'Svalbard is currently entering into a period of profound change, with the mining activities that previously defined the archipelago’s identity increasingly being replaced by a range of international research communities on the one hand, and a booming tourist industry on the other. It is a place where the future is still very much up for discussion, and where arts practice in particular has the rather unique potential to play a defining role in debates ranging from questions of community and lifestyle to ecology and heritage management. It is for these reasons that Northern Norway Art Museum began already in 2013 to engage with Svalbard and its nexus of far-reaching local concerns, establishing in 2015 its Kunsthall Svalbard satellite and attendant Artist in Residence programme as strategic means for engendering arts-driven dialogue around contemporary issues of pressing concern for the Arctic and those communities who make it their home.'

There are limited spaces at the conference available on a first come first served basis. For information please email: mail@oca.no

About Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA)
The Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) is a foundation created by the Norwegian Ministries of Culture and of Foreign Affairs in 2001 with the aim of developing cultural collaborations between Norway and the international arts scene. OCA aims to become one of the main organs in the international contemporary arts debate through initiatives such as exhibitions, seminars and publications, as well as by providing support to Norwegian artists for their activities in the international art arena, and by inviting international curators and artists to Norway. OCA has been responsible for Norway's contribution to the visual arts section of La Biennale di Venezia since 2001.

The Svalbard Conference 'Thinking at the Edge of the World’ is part of a wider cross-disciplinary project exploring the cultural history of Northern Norway, initiated and developed by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA). Structured through a series of regional and international dialogues and partnerships, the project is unfolding in various forms and locations across Norway and beyond, including research, artist residencies, exhibitions, text commissions and a number of activities activated through the new OCA pilot office in Tromsø, beside its premises in Oslo.

AboutNorthern Norway Art Museum (NNKM)
Established in 1985, Northern Norway Art Museum is today a central actor within the visual arts in Norway and, increasingly, the international circumpolar North. From its base in Tromsø, the Museum serves Norway’s three northernmost counties (Nordland, Troms, Finnmark) and Svalbard through exhibitions, research and related arts programming. The Museum’s core portfolio includes an exhibition of its permanent collections and a rolling calendar of temporary exhibitions of high international and national quality at its seat in Tromsø. A range of public outreach and educational offerings complement these exhibition activities, as well as a series of touring exhibitions within Norway and abroad. In addition, the museum founded in 2015 a satellite exhibition and project space in Longyearbyen on Svalbard – the Kunsthall Svalbard and its attendant Artist in Residence programme – dedicated to international contemporary art of the highest calibre.